Hurray! Multan to have a museum, finally

About 80 per cent of work is completed with signs of Mughal-era architecture

ISLAMABAD:

Preserving history and artifacts at museums keeps future generations of any motherland abreast of knowledge and past glory where a few racks bearing memorable heritage reveal the saga of ages. It is very plausible that when people enter a museum they join a world of crisscrossing timelines of history with the relics and artifacts displayed over there telling untold stories and unrecognised memories of quaint times.

“Don't go to a museum with a destination. Museums are wormholes to other worlds. They are ecstasy machines. Follow your eyes to wherever they lead you...and the world should begin to change for you," said the Pulitzer Prize winner American art critic, Jerry Saltz.

Therefore, the museums are not the graves of past but archives of history and culture whereby every single object resuscitates and pulsates life. Such a “wormhole to the other worlds” is the Multan Museum. "Likely to be ready by December this year, the Multan Museum would unfold the history of ancient Multan and ethnic and geographical saga of Mooltani culture and politics," said Muhammad Hassan, deputy director of Archaeology of South Punjab.

"It would be yet another feather in the cap of Multani culture revealing ancient times to younger generation and art and history lovers," he said. The project carrying a tentative cost of Rs80 million was approved in 2021-22 after a decade-long struggle and aspirations of the students, intellectuals and academia of South Punjab. After its approval almost a decade back, it remained under execution for quite some time but was then shelved, declaring it to be unsuitable due to noise and dust pollution and for security reasons.

The then DCO of Multan had dismantled its parking space in 2012 for expansion of city's main artery passing through the traffic-and-trade-busy Ghanta Ghar cross-section. "The Punjab government had approved in year 2012 to convert a century-old, Victorian-era clock tower located in the heart of the city into a museum at an estimated cost of Rs40 million," recalled Malik Ghulam Muhammad, the then in charge of the Archaeology Department of Multan. “It was our long desire to have a museum in Multan, and we continued struggling for it despite all odds," he stated and revealed how he persuaded the then secretary of Tourism Punjab, Ehsaan Bhutta, and Member Board of Revenue, Babar Hayat Tarar, to get approved 10 kanals of land for the museum. He said Wapda wanted this land to build a grid station, but after their proposal failed, we moved forward to have a museum on this land. "Multanites are finally having a museum right in front of archaeology office Multan -- at the feet of the historical Qasim Fort mound and just a few hundred yards from the previous site of the Clock Tower," he said joyously. The museums we see nowadays are developed in a way to serve as centres of learning and knowledge, especially for students and researchers. Being constructed with the aim of depicting our history and culture, the Multan museum houses four galleries, a library-cum-meeting hall, a laboratory, a cafeteria, vast parking space, a boundary wall with gates and a breast wall against the slope of the Qasim Fort. Around 80 per cent of the work is completed with signs of Mughal-era Muslim architecture -- a visible main dome is curved but slightly flat at the centre of roof.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 10^th, 2023.